@dualsuns: courage. when i thought of courage, i thought of my mother.
it must be so exhaustive to collect light inside the body , these symptomatic spaces waiting to be filled , like second birth. only birth could change you so radically. he is watching his uncle’s face being gradually reclaimed by melancholy , only ever by it. this dream or vision or ghost in between them and luke skywalker’s face suddenly as grey as the moon and just as distant. this is myth embellished with memory or perhaps , memory embellished with myth , the dream of the mother like water which passes away , drop upon drop , an echo of a loneliness that is worse than loneliness. the word is grief , the word is also absence. a memory is a body haunted from within.
they watch the ghostlike dance of stars , secretly , quietly , an intimacy so violent it bruises — he had never known his uncle to speak like that , the length of his voice luminous with emotion , like the carcass of a star. he considers this as he turns his face to the sky. & something settles heavy into the back of his mouth , elusive , transient and unfinished. light enters where the wound is. the body is turned inside out , skin no longer offers protection: the unpurged vulnerability of being known. in his stomach he still holds every facet of childhood. when moonlight touches his cheek , he remembers only his mother has come this close. & he stares quite solemnly at his mother's brother , looks for her in him , but he finds such tired eyes , saddened and old , and thinks he will not become this .
he says: ❛ and my mom. ❜ and his voice is folding back into itself , sacrificial , naked , as if sound could shiver. it is the only secret he will ever tell. & such intimacies imply touch , so he touches his uncle's shoulder. there was once a word for this. ❛ i've never known someone as brave as her. ❜
